Generative Systems

Monday, September 29, 2008

Week 3

For Class Week 3:Fluxus Performance Workbook edited by Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn.The link above is a direct link to download the pdf. The same link is also in the sidebar on the right. Focus your attention on 3-5 different artists and base your Artist's Response on their work.

Post an Artist's Response to the Generative Blog by noon the day of class and print out your response to turn in during class.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

My Poem to you all

Kate, a love I've always know.Hudson, my father and me.Shrink this down to something normal.Hollywood was my real father.Goldy is the blessing, I am her.Marriage didn't really work so well.Water under the bridge.Taken by 2000 Cigarettes.Passion is all I've got left.Flowery, this place.Find the comfort within this life I'm given.Herself, I love her because i am her although extremelyseparate reality from.Fashion, I would rather see it stay then go.Suit the sky mommy has set for me.Mom.Hawn is not all that I am or intend to be.

Chance Imagery

Chance Imagery is used on stage when an actor is told to use a prop they have never worked with before yet be able to wear it as if you've had this object your entire life. Much of your unconscious mind must be an element to this performance. In a totally conscious state of being i can imagine it being very difficult to make that specific object look like something of your personal. Free writing...Given the direction, " you may not stop moving your pen or pencil for five minutes, don't think about what your about to write just write from whatever state your in now", is method to the idea of chance. A fine artist seems to constantly work this way, more at cal-arts then anywhere else I would assume. I'm not sure how I feel about the term "Subconscious". When under consciousness you are simply unconscious, no "pre- gaming" necessary. Being able to use non technical ways of expression reforms a method to creating art, theater, music, dance, creating. It's freer, much more exciting things are allowed to happen making its own sort of mechanism, developing this new language. The idea of chance imagery is allowing one to use other senses rather then those within a conscious state.

Freedom To Do Whateva

The freedom to express oneself in a totally free state yet with some sort of grid allows a new form of art. Chance- I think I want to explore the idea of contact improve being purely from the lack of space within New York apartments. If I kept bumping into other dancers while working I'd say this, " Guys, we gotta come up with some kindda plan for this shit. What are we gonna do about running into each other, I mean we should just make that a dance or something right? We'll call it, "contact improve", you like that?" No, the idea of saying, leave it to chance, is a bold way to work, working through what you should not expect.

Being and seeming, 252properties through which to assert your rarity. The demand which isterms of a distinction which always defines itself negatively in relation toproperties through which to assert their rarity. The demand which is

radical juxtaposition.

I think one aspect postmodern dance has only begun to absorb is technology. Physics in its vast field has a place in dance with its universal guidelines like how to trick the human vestibular system by spotting while spinning. We begin to gain an understanding of the laws of physics as soon as we're born, and by the time we learn to walk we've mastered basic center of gravity concepts. Electrodynamics and electrical engineering may be the most distant relative to this relationship, but when analyzed their example of movement could be used in the process of choreography. One example would be the Ring Modulator which is commonly in the form of an effects pedal for electric guitar or organ. One way a ring modulator works is it takes the input from an instrument (sine wave) and heterodyns, or more specifically, convolutes it with that of a built-in oscilator (convolution in the frequency domain is the same as multiplication in the time domain). The resulting output is two new sine waves, the sum and the difference of the two inputs. This circuit could be mutated into a process for chroeography in many ways, one idea is to use a video camera to record one dancer in a guided improvisation. The feed would be analyzed by a computer, which could then output wave form data based on certain movements. This wave form would be then processed through a ring modulator, the resulting signals fed back into the computer. This could then be used to animate two different computer generated 3D models of a dancer or perhaps a automated marionettes. The more this type of process is repeated, the more distorted the dance would become. If the process uses more than one variable, like more than one human dancer, patterns directed by the subconscious may emerge as the resulting images or actions are combined. There are many other simple electrical circuits that we use every day that could influence conceptual movement processes, like RC circuits, OP-AMP circuits or even something as simple as a battery. Electrical engineering is not unlike any other part of the Physics world, it is only foreign and confusing because we cannot see it happening.

excerpts from -Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture By Yuri M. Lotman

defining the concept of the semiosphere"the semiotic space necessary for the existence and functioning of languages, not the sum total of different languages"(123)"In this respect a language is a function, a cluster of semiotic spaces and their boundaries, which, however clearly defined in the language's grammatical self description, in the reality of semiosis are eroded and full of transitional forms"(123-24)"In the center the metastructure is "our" language, but on the periphery it is treated as "someone else's" unable to adequately reflect the semiotic reality beneath it: it is like the grammar of a foreign language. As a result, in the center of the cultural space, sections of the semiosphere aspiring to the level of self-description become rigidly organized and self regulation. But at the same time they lose dynamism and having once exhausted their reserve of indeterminacy they became inflexible and incapable of further development. On the periphery... the relationship between semiotic practice and the norms imposed on it becomes even more strained. Texts generated in accordance with these norms hang in the air, without any real semiotic context; while organic creations, born of actual semiotic milieus, come into conflict with artificial norms. This is the area of semiotic dynamism. This is the field of tension where new languages come into being"(134)shift of language into an area of indeterminacy challenges hegemonic centersgenerating new centers , competing centerseroded and transitional forms

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Yvonne Rainer Trio A

One of the organizers of Judson Dance, Yvonne Rainer has created many games and tasks used to make dance peices. Her use of repetition and patterns in her pieces show new ideas to the world of modern dance.An example of her work, Trio A, which is a part of The Mind is a Muscle, goes against what was traditional modern dance. Her use of everyday movement in the piece became a dance. Playing with natural weight and time created its own rhythm.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yo7XeRVSrc

I find that the "collage" technique can be very helpful and entertaining when creating a piece. You can expect the unexpected and it can be treated as if it were a game. Taking parts and phrases from a dance and mixing them up in a different order can be an exciting way to create choreography. Yvonne Rainer used this technique and it has become a great technique for many artists today.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Week 2

For Class Week 2:Choreographic Methods of the Judson Dance Theater by Sally BanesThe link above is a direct link to download the pdf. The same link is also in the sidebar on the right and I will be handing out a photocopy of the reading in class.

Post an Artist's Response to the Generative Blog by noon the day of class and print out your response to turn in during class.

Tristan Tzara as mentioned in Chance-Imagery

chance sculpture

I've had an idea for a sculpture build process on which George Brecht's Chance Imagery shed a new rational light. This process would begin with three generations of lab mice. Data would be collected, such as Mitochondrial DNA sequences, protein sequences - particularly residue and gaps as variables and motifs. Various columns of this data will be used as an organic but not necessarily random numbers. In order to produce a more statistically true random set, data pulled from fractal images created from exhaust gas research (jet propulsion) or other unrelated data from gas molecule movement patterns will be used. Ultimately a matrix of random data can be created, and aspects needed for 3D mapping of the sculpture (like cartesian coordinates, material density, and even cutting processes) can be derived from this information.

Trisha Brown- Biography/Overview Video on chance structures

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAE8cEEAbJw

(Lines selected from my journal...All written at night, right before i went to sleep)

Feel in control hands pushing and pulling deep blade like would holding not there hungry yearning finally tired wanting to feel special gliding across guilty burns itch living every reach fall drop stop hold don't let go release until nothing is left regrets unfold and pick them apart put me together so I don't have to hold and kiss.

Chance Imagery

It's 1957, "8 years further on the spiral". The mechanisms of overdetermination in automatic thinking continue to produce chance images. And while the sub-conscious shuffles to reconcile objects language is perpetually caught in the bottleneck of the signifier. The appreciation for complex chance images, as harbingers for the the desired chain of associations, is the fascination with viscosity found in some painting and in nature, relishing in the richness of a rational question merged with guttural intuition, perhaps referencing something primordial. Culture imposes meaning on the organs, a playful way of accepting something. If language is the body's most ancient organ then the symbolic becomes physical and the Golden Bough will show itself in chance imagery each time. George Brecht saw the critical whole - man (logos) and nature - reconciled by John Cage in 1957.*

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

Week 1

Hello All - You should have received an invite to join this blog - if not, or if you are having troubles, email me and we will sort things out. Please post a quick hello to everyone once you have received the blog invite.

For Class Week 1:Chance-Imagery by George Brecht a Great Bear Pamphlet(a direct link is above, you may also follow the link to Great Bear Pamphlets in the sidebar under Resources – Chance-Imagery is the third from the top)

Post an Artist's Response to the Generative Blog by noon the day of class and print out your response to turn in during class.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Syllabus

Description:"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art." – Philip Galanter from What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory

Since the atom was split, the amount of information available for consumption as textual andor visual material has grown exponentially. It has been predicted that by 2012 the amount of textual information available to a human being will double every 11 seconds leading to an ephemeralization of knowledge. At the same time, the systems we use to organize information and make it legible have increased in number and complexity.

This course is designed to introduce students to the ways in which various artistic disciplines have used organizational systems to generate imaginative taxonomies, art, and writing defined by process, as well as musical and dance compositions that deploy chance operations. Generative art can be created with varying degrees of technical skill, and can be seen as part of an ongoing exploration of pattern and randomness in the arts. We will look at some examples of complexly programmed online work, but will also be interested in art that is informed by the way technology has impacted the world, i.e. forms of art that come out of a sense of database aesthetics. We will also look at non-electronic conceptual writing from contemporary and historical sources such as “The Tapeworm Foundry,” by Darren Wershler-Henry, various works by the Oulipo, and/or theories of “uncreative” writing by Kenneth Goldsmith, and the combinatoric and permutational work from the past of Raymond Lull and Athanasius Kircher. We will also explore this type of work from other disciplines, including John Cage's explorations with the "I Ching," the Judson Dance Theater's creations of 'post-modern' dance choreography, programmatic examples from the Fluxus Workbook, the generative music techniques employed by Brain Eno, Lev Manovich's Soft[ware] Cinema, and Harold Cohen's scripted painting machine AARON.

Goals:We will look at art being made in a world where the way information is accessed is often more important than the information itself. We will explore conceptual systems and interrogate their intrinsic mathematical constructs and relative levels of complexity. We will attempt to come to terms with new modes of subjectivity being created in/through the work we look at and reflect on how it represents/reacts to contemporary trends beyond the art world.

Attendance:As this is a workshop/discussion class, attendance is essential and will be accounted for at each class meeting. Each student is allowed three absences. A fourth absence will result in a grade of NX.

Coursework:Weekly reading/viewing and Artist's Responses handed in and posted to the class blog(http://generative.blogspot.com)One Presentation in class on reading/viewingOne Research and Design Experiment due Oct 23One Final Project due at the end of class and final presentation

Blog Responses:Responses to the readings, when assigned, are due by noon on the day of class. Roughly 10 of these will be assigned—you must complete at least 6 to receive any credit. These should be short responses to the work we review each week that focus on a particular aspect of interest to you. Post your response to the class blog (http://generative.blogspot.com) and print out a copy to hand in during class. You are encouraged to use the list of Exercises handed out in class as writing guides for these assignments. Also, you are welcome to do 'artists' responses—by posting media work to the class blog, or if you are doing something that isn’t easily presentable in blog format, arrange something with me beforehand and we will figure out a way for you to present work during class.

Presentation:You and a classmate or two will lead the class in discussion of the reading/viewing materials for the week. You may work together as a group on the presentation or prepare separate presentations (if so you should check in with the other presenters and make sure you aren't focusing on the same thing). You are encouraged to use this opportunity to look closely at a particular concept or system and use the time to present a short artistic response to the work andor to bring in a short exercise for the class to participate in.

Research and Design Experiment: Due October 23Primarily, this is a research project that will consist of a 1250 word essay (roughly 4 double spaced pages). You should pick two or three things we have talked about in class and reference one or two things you have discovered on your own. Think of this as an opportunity to research, design and experiment with systems you are interested in exploring for your final project.

Final Project: Due Last Day of Class, December 11 This project will function somewhat as an outgrowth of the Research and Design experiment, but will be more geared towards creative output. You are welcome to work in whatever medium you are most comfortable with, what is most important is that you produce work that relates to the concepts we have investigated during the course of the class. The Final Project will also include a written component consisting of a 1250 word essay (roughly 4 double spaced pages) that relates your creative output to at least three examples from any medium (at least one from our class work and others from your own research—be sure to cite these clearly and that you use different examples than those from the R&D Experiment). During the last three days of class you will be expected to present your work and some of the concepts you have engaged with in a 15 minute presentation.

hi

Week 0

Welcome Everyone to The Generative Blog!

CS 412: Generative Systems of Image / Music / Text Production.

Today we will go through a General Course Introduction.Everyone will Introduce themselves and receive a Fortune.We'll look over Selections from Selected Declarations of Dependence by Harry Mathews.We'll talk about the difference between Random and Arbitrary.We'll talk about Combinatorics and Permutation.We will Combine and Permutate.We'll pass around a List of Exercises.We'll all Sign Up for In Class Presentations.Everyone will be Invited to The Generative Blog!Everyone will Join The Generative Blog!We'll go over how to Post to the Blog.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Writing Exercises

Most of these are from Bernadette Mayer...

Writing Exercises

1. Pick a story from the newspaper (or a magazine, whatever-usually something from a business or science text is good; the Tuesday Science Times section of The NY Times is particularly useful). Choose 20 words from the story that you have never used in a poem before: try to pick the most interesting words you can, the ones that seem to leap out at you for some reason. Write those words down on a separate sheet of paper (so you’re not looking at the original text anymore—if you want you can burn the original text, using proper fire safety procedures). Write a poem that is 20 lines long. Each line must use one of the words you wrote down from the article, and they must be used in the order in which they appeared in the article.

2. Select a particular time of day when you know you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes: early morning, lunch time, before going to sleep, etc. At that time each day, in a notebook begin writing down whatever happens to be going through your mind. Once you begin writing, don’t stop to think, fix your language, etc. This isn’t a poem, just write about ten lines or more, then put the notebook away. Do this for five days. It’s important not to do this on a computer, but handwritten in a notebook and you should keep the notebook with you, because you probably will find after the first day or so that you feel like doing this more than once a day, when you see something interesting or just have time to kill. On a day when you have a chunk of time to work on a poem, take the notebook and write a poem using only the lines (or parts of them) that you’ve written during these sessions.

3. Think of 50 titles, all of them for poems or short pieces of writing that you have no intention of writing. It’s a good idea to carry a notebook everywhere with you when you do this. Give the list to someone else in the class. Choose a title from the list you’ve received and write a poem.

4. Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem (someone else’s than your own) and translate it “English to English” by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or “free” translation as response to each phrase or sentence.

5. Homophonic translation: Take a text or poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem into English (Ex: French ‘blanc’ to blank or ‘toute’ to toot).

6. Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary.

7. Acrostic Chance. Pick a book at random and use the title as an acrostic key phrase. For each letter of the key phrase go to the page number in the book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as the first line of a poem form the first word that begins with that letter to the end of the line or sentence. Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word. Variations include using author’s name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or a friend’s name, devise alternative acrostic procedures.

8. Tzara’s hat. Everyone in a group writes down a word (phrase or line) and puts it in a hat. The text is composed according to the order it is randomly pulled from the hat. (On your own, pick words or lines from books, newspapers, magazines, your own work.)

9. Burrough’s Fold-in: Take two different pages from a newspaper or magazine, article or book, and cut the pages in half or thirds vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together.

10. Write a text with words cut somewhere in the middle and recombined with the beginning parts following the ending parts.

11. General cut-ups: Write a text composed entirely of phrases lifted from other sources. Use one source for a poem or other text and then many; try different types of sources: literary, historical, magazines, advertisements, manuals, dictionaries, instructions, travelogues, etc.

12. Cento: write a collage made up of full-lines of selected source poems, or texts.

13. Substitution (1): “Mad libs”. Take a poem (or other source text) and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under the blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context.

14. Substitution (2): “7 up or down”. Take a poem or other, possibly well-known, text and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index work in a dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement.

15. Substitution (3): “Find and replace”. Systematically replace one word in a source text with another word or string of words. Perform this operation serially with the same source text, increasing the number of words in the replace string.

16. Serial sentences: Select one sentence from a variety of different books or other sources. Add sentences of your own composition. Combine into one paragraph, reordering to produce the most interesting results.

17. Alphabet poems: make up a poem of 26 words so that each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet. Write another alphabet poem but scramble the letter order.

18. Alliteration (assonance): Write a poem in which all the words in each line begin with the same letter.

19. Doubling: Starting with one sentence, write a series of paragraphs each doubling the number of sentences in the previous paragraph and including all the words used previously.

20. Collaboration: Write a piece with one or more other people: alternating lines (chaining or renga), writing simultaneously and collaging, rewriting, editing, supplementing the previous version. This can be done in person or otherwise.

21. Group sonnet: 14 people each write one ten-word line (or alternate-Write a text trying to transcribe as accurately as you can your thoughts while you are writing. Don’t edit anything out. Write as fast as you can without planning what you are going to say)

22. Dream work: Write down your dreams as the first thing you do every morning for 30 days. Apply translation and aleatoric processes to this material. Double the length of the dream. Weave them together into one poem, adding or changing or reordering the material. Negate or reverse all statements (I went down the hill to I went up the hill, I didn’t to I did). Borrow a friend’s dreams and apply these techniques to them.

23. Write a text made up entirely of neologism or nonsense words or fragments of words.

24. Write a text with each line filling in the blanks of “I used to be ---, but now I am ---.” (I used to write poems, but now I just do experiments; I used to make sense, but now I just make poems.)

25. Write a text consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never would, to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.

26. Write a text consisting entirely of overheard conversation.

27. Nonliterary forms: Write a text in the form of an index, a table of contents, a resume, an advertisement for an imaginary or real product, an instruction manual, a travel guide, a quiz or examination, etc.

28. Imitation: Write a text in the style of each of a dozen poets or writers who you like and dislike: try to make it as close to a forgery of an “unknown” work of the author as possible.

29. Write a text without mentioning any objects.

30. Backwards: Reverse or alter the line sequence of a poem of your own or someone else’s. Reverse the word order. Rather than reverse, scramble.

35. Counting: Write poems that conform to various numeric patterns for number of words in a line or sentence, number of lines in a stanza or paragraph, number of stanzas or paragraphs in a work. Alternately, count letters or syllables. Use complex numeric series or simpler fixed-number patterns.

36. Write a text just when you are on the verge of falling asleep. Write a line a day as you are falling asleep or waking up.

37. List poem: Write a text consisting of favorite words or phrases collected over a period of time; pick your favorite words from a particular book.

38. List poem 2: Write a text consisting entirely of a list of “things”, either homogenous or heterogeneous (common lists include shopping lists, things to do, lists of flowers or rocks, lists of colors, inventory lists, lists of events, lists of names, …).

39. Chronology: make up a list of dates with associated events, real or imagined.

40. Transcription: Tape a phone or live conversation between yourself and a friend. Make a poem composed entirely of transcribed parts.

41. Canceling: Write a series of lines or rhymes such that every other one cancels the one before (“I come before you / to stand behind you”).

42. Erasure: Take a poem of your own or someone else’s and cross out most of the words on each poem, retype what remains as your poem.

43. Write a series of ten poems going from one to ten words in each poem. Reorder.

44. Write a text composed entirely of questions.

45. Write a text made up entirely of directions.

46. Write a text consisting only of opening lines (improvise your own lines, then use source texts).

48. Synchronicity: Write a text in which all the events occur simultaneously.

49. Diachronicity: Write a text in which all the events occur in different places and at different times.

50. Visual poetry: write poems with strong visual or “concrete” elements-including combination of lexical and nonlexical (pictorial) elements. Play with alphabets and typography, placement of words on the page, etc.

51. Write a series of poems or stanzas while listening to music; change type of music for each stanza or poem.